"Lieutenant," came a voice through thick layers. "Lieutenant. I've found a boy and he's unhurt. I don't know why but he's unhurt." And turning, he saw there was in fact a boy, perhaps eleven years old, physically unscathed but for a look of bitter hopelessness in his dark eyes that went far beyond his years. It seemed from the nurse's expression that he should say something so he pronounced, What is your name? "Elie." WIESEL, he thought. SEVEN TIMES CURSED AND SEVEN TIMES SEALED. Then Night fell completely in his soul, and he felt no more. ........................................................................ .................................. ACT FOUR Ardennes, Balthazar and Scimitar Sectors Months I through IV International Year: 2212 REVERSAL I The Chinese colonies, the fences of Dark, endured. Though pressed to their last utmost need, many times beyond despair, the Chinese could not be broken. Help arrived as all courage failed, and the Enemy was driven back. The assassination of Stone did not, if that had been its purpose, intensify the Constitutional crisis under which the Commonwealth labored. Its citizens, for the most part, knew Plant to be an intelligent and experienced politician. And if anything, after the disillusioning of recent events, and slow reawakening of the national conscience (though still riddled with blind-spots), most felt that their dilemma now rested in more competent hands. But more than that, some intangible quality of the people themselves, indefinable, led the Americans at such times of crisis to rally around their leaders, united and prepared to act. Ironically, bitterly (to those who still remembered the evils of World War II), this was a German trait as well. The entire military and intelligence-gathering forces of the nation were now mobilized to head off Hayes' disastrous charge, which had left such horrors in its wake. For now a full account of the Dracus incident had been received, and those with any conscience at all, realized that they had been party to a catastrophe that could never be set right, and whose wounds would fully never heal. And while the Americans were no more eager than any other nation to admit such atrocities---the slave trade, and the genocide of the Native Americans spring to mind---truth IS a naked sword, and its hard won freedom of the press made it impossible to deny. But the rogue (war criminal, psychopath) had not been caught, and the Pandora's Box of chaos and violence which he (along with others) had opened, was far from contained. II